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100 SQL Server Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
1. welcome
2. 1_Introducing_SQL_Server
3. 2_Development_Standards
4. 3_Data_Types
5. 4_Database_Design
6. index
welcome
Thank you for purchasing 100 SQL Server Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. To get the
very best experience from this book, however, I suggest that you do have
some prior knowledge of SQL Server. For example, I would suggest that you:

Know how to write basic queries, to read data from tables, and update
data in tables
Understand fundamental SQL Server concepts, such as Instances,
Databases and Tables
Understand the concept of encryption
Know how to perform a basic installation of SQL Server, using the GUI

I have been working with SQL Server for nearly two decades, and in that
time, I have seen lots of mistakes, that have led to problems. In this book, I
will share many of the mistakes that I have encountered and provide advice
on how to avoid making them yourself.

The primary audience for this book is the accidental SQL Server professional,
who has been thrown in the deep end, and found themselves either
developing T-SQL or administering SQL Server instances, or both!
Therefore, this book covers a range of mistakes that are made in multiple
areas, including development, administration, availability, and security.

If you have any feedback on the book, then please do reach out through the
livebook discussion forum. Your constructive feedback will help make it a
better book and your positive feedback will help keep me motivated! So, I
hope to speak to you on the forum soon, but in the meantime, thanks again
for buying the book on MEAP!

—Pete Carter

In this book
welcome 1 Introducing SQL Server 2 Development Standards 3 Data Types 4
Database Design
1 Introducing SQL Server
This chapter covers
What you should know about this book
The SQL Server index mistake (Mistake 0)
An overview of SQL Server
Why we should still care about SQL Server
Why getting SQL Server right matters

Over recent years, the DBA has become a catch-all term to describe anybody
who works with databases. I always feel that this is doing something of a
disservice to both the technology and the professionals who work with it.
SQL Server is a massive product and complex data-tier applications require
teams to have a range of competencies to harness its full power. Therefore,
when we refer to DBA in this book, we will specifically be referring to
Database Administrators.

We will cover topics relevant to people with the following roles:

Database Administrators (DBAs)

Database Developers
Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) Engineers

Although it may also be of interest to members of the following communities,

if they have overlapping responsibilities:

Database Architects
Data warehouse Developers
Testers
Cyber Security Engineers
Business Intelligence (BI) Developers

1.1 The SQL Server Index Mistake (Mistake 0)

The modern SQL Server ecosystem is large and complex, which leads me
nicely to mistake 0, which is terminology that I have borrowed from
virology, where the index case (or case 0) describes the first patient to
contract a virus and infect other people. In this context, it is the root of all
other SQL Server mistakes. This mistake is not usually made by database
professionals. Instead, it is generally made by Solution Architects, Delivery
Managers, Program Managers, and Business Analysts. It can be summed up
in a single quote. A quote that I wish I had $1 every time I heard it.

“But it’s just a database, right?”

This assumption of simplicity leads to an incredible number of projects not

budgeting for the resources to develop a suitable data-tier application or
factoring in enough time to sufficiently develop such an application. It leads
to due consideration not being given to the post-project operational support of
the environment and it leads to the term “DBA” being used to describe
anybody who works with databases, regardless of their competencies.

How are these issues addressed? Welcome the “Accidental DBA”, a person
who has a limited amount of experience in SQL Server; often because they
are an application developer who has created some small databases as a
backend data store in the past. Suddenly, this person is responsible for the
development, optimization, administration, and security posture of all things
SQL Server related.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, then it is certainly worth you reading
on, as this book will explore the common mistakes made by database
professionals who are finding their feet, many of which fall into the
Accidental DBA camp.

In this book, we will discuss mistakes that are made by people performing
tasks related to development, administration, high availability (HA) and
disaster recovery (DR) as well as security.

1.2 An Overview of SQL Server

SQL Server is a leading Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)
produced by Microsoft. In its simplest form, it provides a platform for
hosting and managing databases. It also has many other features, however,
which allow for advanced activities, such as reporting, data transformation,
and master data management.

C4 Model

As well as technical diagrams in this book, we will also make use of the C4
model, where appropriate. The C4 model is a set of architectural standard
diagrams. At its core, C4 contains four standard diagrams, consisting of a
system context diagram, a container diagram, a component diagram, and a
code diagram. The system context diagram is at the highest level, illustrating
an application’s interfaces with users and other applications. Each subsequent
level drills through a specific area of the application, providing ever more
granular detail. The lowest level of granularity being the code diagram at the
bottom.

The model also contains side diagrams, consisting of a system landscape

diagram, which illustrates how a portfolio of applications interacts. A
dynamic diagram, which illustrates how static elements work together at
runtime to form a feature, The final diagram is a deployment diagram, which
illustrates the platform that an application is deployed on.

Tip

While a full discussion of C4 is beyond the scope of this book, a full

description can be found at c4model.com

To understand the breadth of SQL Server a little better, let’s imagine the use
case of a confectionary company called MagicChoc. They have a website,
hosted in the public cloud, which sells their chocolatey goodness. They also
have a small data center in their factory, which hosts their manufacturing
application, stock control application and reporting solution. This is
illustrated in the system landscape diagram in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 MagicChoc System Landscape Diagram

The interesting part of this system landscape is that all of four of the
applications have a SQL Server component. The MagicChoc website is
hosted in Azure and has an Azure SQL Database storing information in the
backend. The stock inventory system and the manufacturing application both
have SQL Server databases, and these databases are hosted on the same SQL
Server instance, which runs on a virtual machine in the data center. The
company reporting tool consists of a data warehouse, hosted in the data
center, but it also uses SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as the front
end and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to produce multidimensional
data models. It also uses SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to pull data
from the other applications and transform it into a denormalized structure,
optimized for reporting.

Let’s zoom in and examine a container diagram, which focuses on the

reporting application. This diagram can be found in Figure 1.2 and allows us
to start seeing the breadth of the SQL Server stack.

Figure 1.2 Reporting Application Container Diagram

Note

C4 diagrams should always be used appropriately, and you should pick and
mix the most appropriate diagrams for any given scenario. In this chapter, the
System Landscape diagram and the Container diagram are the most
appropriate to illustrate the scenario, but we will be using other C4 diagrams
throughout the book.

You can see how the reporting application actually uses multiple SQL Server
components, in order to service the business requirements, as well as
databases which sit alongside the data warehouse and enable the functionality
of those components. A full list of the major components of SQL Server 2022
are detailed in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 SQL Server Major Components

Component Description
Analysis Services Allows for the creation and hosting of
(SSAS) multidimensional data models and tabular data
 models that can be used for advanced reporting
Azure Connected Supports tight integration between Azure and SQL
Services Server hosted on-premises. This includes the ability
to easily integrate on-premises hosted SQL Server
instances with Azure features such as Synapse,
Purview, and Microsoft Defender. Additionally, the
simple Azure Arc connection can be configured
during instance installation. This allows a single
view of SQL Server installations across multi-cloud
and on-premises and fully automated technical
assessments.
Database Engine The core database management service, which
allows for relational databases to be built and
hosted. It includes second-tier operating system
components for managing memory and processor
resources. It also incorporates data security, high
availability technologies, data replication,
integrations with heterogeneous data sources, and
support for semi-structured data, such as XML and
JSON.
Data Quality A data quality solution which provides a knowledge
Services (DQS) base to support critical data quality tasks, such as
standardization and de-duplication. The DQS Server
component comprises data quality functionality and
storage, while the Data Quality Client component
provides a graphical user interface that can be used
by data domain experts.
Data Virtualization Allows developers to use T-SQL to query external
with PolyBase data sources, such as Azure Blob, Delta Tables (the
default table format in Azure Databricks), Hadoop,
MongoDB, Oracle, S3, and Teradata
Integration Services Provides versatile Extract, Transform and Load
(SSIS) (ETL) operations. Often used to pull data from
heterogeneous sources, de-normalize the data, and
populate data warehouses. Also used to integrate
data from external sources, such as web services and
FTP sites, into SQL Server databases.
Machine Learning Allows developers to use R and Python scripts
Services (In- inside databases. These scripts can be used to
Database) prepare data for machine learning, or to train,
evaluate, and deploy machine learning models.
Master Data Services A Master Data Management (MDM) solution which
(MDS) allows data stewards to manage a company’s master
data. Stewards can create data models and rules.
Master data can also be exported so that it can be
easily shared with business stakeholders.
Reporting Services Provides users with a graphical reporting tool.
(SSRS) Reports can contain tabular data, as well as charts,
maps, and other graphical elements. The reports can
be complex and there is support for parameters,
variables, linked reports, and report caching.

As you can see, SQL Server is a vast and complex product, which can and
does span many volumes. Therefore, in this book, we will focus mainly on
the database engine, although we will also touch on cloud integration and
SSIS. Therefore, let’s dive a little deeper into the database engine.

1.2.1 Overview of the Database Engine

To explain the Database Engine, let’s explore the journey a query takes when
it is executed by a user. So, let’s imagine that a MagicChoc customer is
exploring the website and decides to look more closely at the LushBar
chocolate bar. The website runs the query below:
SELECT
ProductName
, ProductDescription AS Description
, CASE
WHEN StockQty >= 10
THEN N'In Stock'
WHEN StockQty > 0 AND StockQty < 10
THEN CAST(StockQty AS NVARCHAR) + ' left in stock'
ELSE 'Out of stock'
END
, ProductImage
FROM dbo.Products WITH (NOLOCK)
WHERE ProductID = @ProductID
NOTE

Using NOLOCK in this context is a mistake that we will discuss in Chapter 4

The journey of this query is depicted in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3 The Flow of a Query Through the Database Engine

In this diagram, you can see that the user interacts with SQL Server using the
Tabular Data Streams (TDS) application layer protocol. SQL Server receives
this data via SNI, which is part of SQL Server’s protocol layer. The protocol
layer then sends the request to the Relational Engine.

Here, the query is parsed. If you have made a mistake in the syntax of your
query, the parser is the component that will cause the error to be thrown. This
process not only checks the validity of query syntax, but also includes the
algebraization; a process which converts object names into object IDs. This
results in the creation of a highly normalized query tree, which is passed to
the Query Optimizer.

The Query Optimizer is a highly sophisticated process, which sits right at the
heart of SQL Server. The difference between SQL and many other languages,
such as C or BASIC, is that SQL is a descriptive language, rather than a
prescriptive language. In prescriptive languages, a developer specifies exactly
what he or she wants the language to do. In a descriptive language like SQL,
however, the developer simply describes the results that he or she wants to
return. It is the Query Optimizer that is responsible for determining the most
efficient way of returning the desired result set. As you can imagine, this will
have a huge impact on the performance of the Database Engine. Therefore,
the optimizer uses object types, data types, and statistics, among other
metadata, to describe the data in columns and indexes, to assess the cost of
various plans. Although the optimizer is an incredible component, it is no
substitute for well written code. You can help the optimizer to help you, by
ensuring you do not fall into T-SQL development pitfalls, such as using
cursors, which we will discuss in chapters 4 and 8. Another mistake that can
hinder the optimizer is failing to keep your statistics and indexes maintained.
We will be exploring this in chapters 9 and 10, respectively.

Tip

SQL Server 2022 can also use optimizer feedback. This uses the Query Store
and Intelligent Query Processing to optimize aspects of the query plan, such
as the memory grants and the maximum degree of parallelism, based on the
performance of a given query over time. This will be discussed further in
Chapter 9
Once a suitable plan has been established, the plan is sent to the Query
Executor. This component will interact with the Storage Engine to read (or
write) the required data. This involves the Transaction Manager, which is
responsible for managing and distributing the results of an atomic transaction.
Even though our query has not been run in the context of an explicit
transaction, it will still be inside an implicit transaction. The performance of
your transactions can be impacted if you have chosen a sub-optimal
transaction isolation level, which we will discuss in chapter 9. Lock Manager
is responsible for locking objects to ensure transactional consistency. In the
case of our query, it is possible to read rows which are never committed,
because we have used the NOLOCK query hint. We will discuss this further in
chapter 4. The Buffer Manager is the component which interacts with the
cached data in memory.

The three areas of cache which are depicted on the diagram are the Plan
Cache, which stores complex query plans, meaning that subsequent
invocations of the query may be able to avoid the optimization process. The
Log Cache caches transaction log records before they are flushed to disk.

Tip

The log records are always flushed to disk before a transaction is committed
unless Delayed Durability is used.

The Buffer Cache stores data pages that have been read from disk. It is
important to note that a query is always satisfied from the cache and never
directly from data stored on disk. Even if the required data pages do not
reside in cache, they will be read from disk into the cache and then the query
will be satisfied from the cached data. A common mistake is to return more
data in a query than you need. If you do this, then the buffer cache will fill up
quicker than it needs to. This will result in older data being released from the
cache sooner. In turn, this can lead to poor performance, as data needs to be
read from disk more often. We will discuss this more in chapter 4.

1.2.2 Heterogenous Platforms

It is important to remember that SQL Server is no longer just “a database on
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 There was no reason, however, why Juliette and George Sand
should not correspond. Mme. Sand never failed to take an interest in
her correspondent’s literary career.
She read all her books and gave the young author the invaluable
benefit of her criticism. Though her book Mon Village was dedicated
to Mme. d’Agoult, it was, as we have seen, written at the suggestion
of George Sand.
For nine years Juliette and her unknown friend, her amie éloignée,
as Mme. Sand called herself, continued to correspond. And it was
not until Juliette’s final breach with Mme. d’Agoult, in 1867, that the
former considered herself at liberty to see in the flesh her whose
spirit and whose writings she had admired so long.
Mme. Adam’s graphic description of the memorable meeting in the
third volume of her Souvenirs[144] has become almost a classic.
With her whole being throbbing with emotion, Juliette went by
appointment to Mme. Sand’s flat, No. 97, Rue des Feuillantines. In a
large arm-chair, which made her appear quite a little woman, Mme.
Sand sat with both arms on a table in front of her, rolling a cigarette.
“I approached,” writes Juliette; “she did not rise, but she pointed
to a seat, which I was to take, quite near the table. Her large kind
eyes enveloped, attracted me. My pulse beat violently.
“I made a great effort to greet her with a word. I found nothing to
say. My heart came into my mouth.
“She lit her cigarette and began to smoke. She also seemed
searching for a word to address to me; but she no more than I could
find anything to say.
“Later I knew how reserved she felt in the presence of any one
whom she saw for the first time.
“Then, realising that I must appear idiotic, my feelings overcame
me, and I burst into tears.
 “George Sand threw away her cigarette and held out her arms to
me. I threw myself into them, possessed by that filial tenderness
which I had longed to experience, and which has remained with me
to this hour.”
Naturally they could not avoid talking of that disagreement with
Mme. d’Agoult which had rendered the meeting possible.
Then they discussed a theme constantly recurring in the
conversation of serious persons in that day: the frivolity and
corruption of Parisian society under the Empire, and the reign of
opportunism.
They rejoiced at the boldness of the manager of the Théâtre
français, who had dared to represent a play by Victor Hugo, then a
political exile, and they delighted to think of the consolation it must
bring to the author in his banishment.
“I left Mme. Sand,” writes Juliette, “after two hours of confidences,
confirmed in my adoration of her and in our friendship.
“Would that I could tell and tell again all her delicacy of feeling,
her nobility of heart, her moral elevation, her wide comprehension of
life, her serenity learnt in so hard a school, won at the price of such
cruel experiences.”
That Juliette on her part had favourably impressed her new
acquaintance may be seen by the terms in which Mme. Sand refers
to her in her correspondence. Writing to Flaubert in September
1867, she calls Juliette une charmante jeune femme de lettres,[145]
and again to the same correspondent she exclaims later, Mme.
Juliette Lamber est vraiment charmante. George Sand took a deep
interest in all the members of her young friend’s family. At her
invitation Juliette’s betrothed, Edmond Adam, went to see her. They
talked of 1848. Speaking of Juliette, Mme. Sand said to Adam, “I
have waited long for cette fille adoptive”; of Adam to his bride, “He
has a loyal hand:[146] you must be proud to give him yours.”[147]
Henceforth nothing would satisfy Juliette and her affianced but that
Mme. Sand should visit them on the Golfe Juan. Juliette described
her Bruyères as modest but gay, Adam’s villa, Le Grand Pin, as fine
and equipped with every possible comfort and convenience. George
decided for Bruyères.
“Et me voilà,” writes Juliette, “aussi joyeuse qu’Edmond Adam va
devenir jaloux.”[148] Mme. Sand, who adored children and was never
tired of talking of her own little granddaughter Aurora, insisted on
seeing Alice. With Juliette’s daughter it was a case of love at first
sight. For Mme. Sand, who had a nickname for every one she loved,
Alice was henceforth Topaz, because of the dark olive complexion
she had inherited from her Sicilian father, Lamessine.
Henceforth Juliette lived in the hope of that promised winter visit
to Bruyères. But before her southern flight in November, she was to
see a great deal of her friend in Paris. In September they went
together to Rouen and Jumièges.[149] They dined together in town.
Once at Mme. Sand’s favourite restaurant, the famous Magny’s, on
the left bank,[150] Juliette met for the first time an illustrious
quartette of whom she was to see much later: Edmond and Jules de
Goncourt, Gustave Flaubert and Dumas fils. The friendship between
Juliette and Flaubert, which dates from that evening, endured until
the novelist’s death. With Flaubert’s family Mme. Adam has
continued intimate, and the opening weeks of this year (1917) she
spent with Flaubert’s niece at her country house in the department
of Var. The talk, chez Magny, that evening[151] was lively and frank,
to say the least of it. The youth, the beauty, the charm of Mme.
Sand’s new friend, provoked Dumas to scoff at the idea of her
becoming a writer and a bas bleu. He, like Michel Lévy of old,[152]
believed, as he put it, that she had something better to do. “Il faut
aimer, aimer, aimer,” he cried. And Flaubert and the de Goncourts
repeated, “Il faut aimer.” “To learn that, gentlemen, I have not
waited for your words of wisdom,” replied Juliette. “I love to love
whom I love, and he, whom I love, loves to see me write.”
 “The fool,” cried Dumas.
“What an extraordinary idea,” exclaimed Mme. Sand, “to attempt
to prove in my presence that a woman who is a writer cannot love.”
“There is truth in it all the same,” said Edmond de Goncourt.
“Never,” protested George Sand. “The reproach which may be
brought against women writers is precisely that they have loved too
much. Et la preuve, dedans moi-même, je la treuve,” she added,
relapsing into patois.
“You,” cried Dumas, “why you have never loved anything but the
prefigurings of the heroes of your future novels, something like the
marionettes,[153] whom you have rigged out to repeat your play.
Can that be called loving?”
“Come,” said Flaubert. “Now, we four are writers of some
standing. Can we be called great lovers?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” replied Mme. Sand. “But, to
confine oneself to recent examples, it is absurd to maintain that
Mme. de Staël, Mme. d’Agoult, Mme. de Girardin and I have not
been passionate lovers. Indeed, on the contrary, what remains to be
proved is the possibility of a pretty woman writer, who is really
gifted, continuing a simple, loving, faithful wife like any other
woman.”
“Yes, that is an interesting problem,” said Jules de Goncourt.
That evening Mme. Sand talked more than usual. Generally she
preferred to listen, delighting to emphasise some witty remark,
which she relished more than any one by a frank outburst of
laughter or a brief exclamation.
In conversation Mme. Sand was best in tête-à-tête. Some of the
most memorable of her confidential talks with her friend, Mme.
Adam has reproduced in her Souvenirs.
 One evening in Paris, when they were to have gone to the Odéon
together, the play having been suddenly changed through an actor’s
illness, “Let us stay at home and talk, dear Juliette,” said George.
That conversation marked the beginning of George Sand’s
ascendancy over her young friend’s mind. “A partir de cette heure,”
writes Juliette, “ma grande amie maternelle a été mon guide”.[154]
At the end of a long silence, during which she had been smoking
cigarettes, throwing them into a bowl of water after a few whiffs,
George said, as if resuming the thoughts that had been occupying
her—
“I want my life to be useful to another, to the daughter whom I
choose to adopt, to you, my child. As we learn to know one another
better, as we talk more and more to one another, I will tell you by
what paths, always roughest when I most sought to find them
smooth, I have climbed the hill of existence.”
Through all that she has written of George Sand, we find Juliette
ever attempting to excuse, or at least to account for, the
irregularities, the ebullience, the wild passions of her friend’s
exuberant and turbulent youth. She attributes them to the
extravagance and effervescence of that romantic movement, in the
hey-day of which Mme. Sand lived the first half of her life. For this
view of her friend’s career Juliette had the authority of George
herself.
“In my young days,” said Mme. Sand on this memorable evening,
“I moved in a purely artificial world, in which we were all resolved to
feel, to experience, to love, to think, differently from the vulgar herd.
Determined to avoid the bank, to swim out into the open, we were
constantly losing our foothold and floundering in unfathomable
depths. Remote from the crowd, remote from the shore, always
more and more remote. How many of us have not perished body
and soul!
 “And those who would not be drowned, who struggled, who were
thrown back on to the bank, they recovered their footing, they
became like other people, through contact with the earth, and
especially with the common sense of humble folk. How often have I
not become myself again in the midst of peasants! How often has
not Nohant cured me of and saved me from Paris!”
For George Sand, as for Joan of Arc four centuries ago, as for
Anatole France to-day, the most adorable, the most salutary, the
most indispensable of all human sentiments is pity. Looking back
from the vantage point of old age on the mad, passionate
adventures of her youth, Mme. Sand saw herself ever swayed from
the bottom of her heart by une grand pitié. It was often that pity
which caused her to quarrel with her lovers. She loved them as a
mother loves her child. But they demanded from her the love of a
mistress.
“Quand je m’examine,” she said to Juliette, “je vois que les deux
seules passions de ma vie ont été la maternité et l’amitié.”[155]
After numerous delays and postponements Mme. Sand,
accompanied by her son Maurice and her friend Planet, at length, in
February 1868, arrived at Bruyères. The date of the visit had been
so frequently changed that Juliette and Alice had begun to fear that
it might never take place at all. “Cold outside, comfort within, and
especially the happiness of living surrounded by one’s family,” writes
Mme. Sand to a friend in Paris,[156] “have delayed my journey.” But
on the 22nd of February she was able to write to a friend at Toulon
from “Golfe Juan, Villa Bruyères.” “We are very comfortably installed,
very much spoilt, very energetic, very happy. The day after to-
morrow we are going to Nice, Monaco and Mentone. We shall be
away three or four days. Consequently you must try not to let your
business bring you here before the end of the week. Friday, for
example, we are always at home. For on that day Mme. Lambert
receives. But if you come on another day you must let us know; for
we generally spend the whole day out of doors, and sometimes go a
considerable distance.”[157]
In picnics, in visits to Monte Carlo and other scenes of gaiety, in
sailing in La Petite Fadette, the yacht which had been Edmond
Adam’s New Year’s gift to his affianced bride, the time passed very
pleasantly. George Sand was a fervent geologist and botanist. “Give
me a piece of stone,” she would say, “and I will tell you the kind of
flora it will produce.” By such means and without visiting the country
she is said to have given a background to some of her novels. On
one of their picnics Mme. Sand suggested that they should found a
new Abbey of Thelema, in which Juliette was to be housekeeper and
caterer. And she could not have made a better choice, as will testify
all who have tasted of Mme. Adam’s hospitality.
The fortnight which Mme. Sand passed on the Golfe Juan was for
Juliette one of the happiest in that happy year, 1868, the year of her
marriage with Edmond Adam. Bruyères was a home of delight to
those who enjoyed its charming hospitality and had the good fortune
to stay there. La Villa du Bon Repos some of them christened it, and
later it was known as “the Adam’s earthly Paradise.” During the
February of 1868 it was the gayest house on the Riviera.
Mme. Sand was a delightful person to entertain, so simple, so
contented, so entirely occupied with other people, never permitting
her hosts to perceive in her the slightest suggestion of care, anxiety,
or fatigue. Perfectly regular and orderly in her manner of life, every
day she made her first appearance at the twelve-o’clock lunch, and
from that hour until ten her friends had her to themselves. At ten in
the evening she bade them good-night and retired to her room to
work, frequently until the small hours of the morning. Juliette,
whose room was beneath Mme. Sand’s and who also went to bed
late, used to hear her moving about. Her cigarettes and a glass of
water were all she required for her long vigils.
Maurice Sand, her son, himself a gifted writer, one of the wittiest
and gayest of companions, the inventor and manager of the
celebrated marionette theatre at Nohant, entertained the company
with his jokes—no one could long be serious in his presence.
Mme. Sand’s friend Planet had been brought up to laugh at
Nohant (élevé à rire), for Mme. Sand believed in mirth as the most
effectual of sanitives. La gaieté est la meilleure hygiène de l’esprit.
“Consequently,” writes Juliette, “I assure you we are not sad.”[158]
George Sand used to say that she was never sure of her friends
until she had stayed with them and lived some days of their life. Her
visit to Bruyères drew more closely the cords of her intimacy with
Juliette, and sealed their friendship.
On their return to Paris, and after their marriage, which took place
in the spring, the Adams were constantly being urged by Mme. Sand
to visit her at Nohant. “Chers enfants,” wrote George, “quand vous
verra t’on? On vous attend maintenant tout l’été, sans aucun projet
que le bonheur de vous embrasser tous trois”[159] (Edmond Adam,
Juliette and Alice). Adam had a horror of country visits. But in this
case he was willing to set aside his prejudice, and to accept the
great George’s invitation. The Adams only waited until Juliette’s
father, Dr. Lambert, had recovered from an operation for stone.
Finally, on the 4th of July, in time for their hostess’s sixty-fifth
birthday, jour de bouquets et d’embrassades, they arrived at Mme.
Sand’s picturesque home at Nohant, in the heart of that beloved
Berry, which readers of her novels know so well.
The birthday of the mistress of Nohant was a fête for the
neighbourhood. Maurice had spent the previous night decorating the
hall and reception-rooms with garlands woven by the peasants. In
the art of decoration, the creator of the Marionette Theatre was a
past master; and the whole house appeared a bower of flowers and
verdure.[160]
The firing of a gun announced the luncheon hour. Marshalled by
Maurice, the entire household, guests, servants and even the tiny
granddaughter Aurora, holding Alice’s hand, assembled in grande
toilette. Alice and her mother had been early out in the fields
gathering wild flowers for the birthday nosegays, which they were to
present to their hostess. Then she appeared. The servants cried:
“Vive la bonne dame.” Maurice read an address which he had
prepared for the occasion. “Ce que tu es adorablement stupide,”
cried his mother, embracing him. Then all the guests in turn
expressed their good wishes. Luncheon passed gaily, the afternoon
was spent out of doors. But the great event of the day was the
evening performance in the marionette theatre.
To the description of this highly ingenious, perfectly artistic and
most entrancing of entertainments Mme. Adam devotes six pages of
her Souvenirs. The spectators were encouraged to express their
opinions audibly as the play went on. Each had his favourite actor or
actress. Mme. Adam, having declared her preference for a certain
Coq-en-Bois, he from the stage invited her to dine with him in a
cabinet particulier at the Café Brébant. “Ah! no, I protest!” cried
Adam; and led by the queen of the festival, the whole audience was
convulsed with laughter.
In theory, and in practice during her early days, always a rebel
against order and discipline, in her home George Sand had ever
been the personification of orderliness. Perfect tidiness reigned in
her simply furnished study. In her desk and her large cupboards,
every drawer and shelf was furnished with a label indicating the
contents. Equally precise was the arrangement of her bedroom,
opening out of the study, with its fine old furniture and its hangings
of blue—the colour of the Golfe Juan, as she said to Juliette. In her
gardens, where she had acclimatised an immense variety of plants,
collected during her travels, Mme. Sand took great delight. But no
one was allowed to cut the flowers. Those used for house decoration
were all gathered in the woods and fields.
Serious conversation, profound discussions, Mme. Sand reserved
for her tête-à-têtes. The general talk at Nohant was of the mirth-
provoking order, that intelligent nonsense which clears the brain and
sharpens the wits. If any one was inclined to be too serious, he was
immediately prodded into liveliness by one of those practical jokes in
which the mistress of Nohant revelled. The unhappy Edmond Adam
had all his worst prejudices against country-house parties confirmed
when he was roused from his slumbers by the crowing of a cock,
which Maurice had hidden in the wood-chest of his bedroom. The
wretched victim’s vociferations, mingling with the voice of
chanticleer, as in night attire this much-tried guest searched for his
tormentor, afforded intense amusement to the household assembled
in the passage, as well as to Juliette, who, being in the secret, was
cowering beneath the sheets, trying to suppress her laughter, and to
Alice in the adjoining room.
Several days of the Nohant visit were occupied in excursions to
places of interest in the neighbourhood, to the Druidical monuments
of Crevant and to La Mare au Diable.
After they had left Nohant the Adams continued to see a great
deal of George Sand. In the autumn of 1868 they accompanied her
on a tour to the Meuse Valley, which she intended to make the scene
of her next novel, Malgré Tout. The great George was a valiant
traveller. None of the discomforts of country tours in days when inns
were close and filthy disturbed her. With what she called the
poltronnerie of Juliette and Alice, who complained of sleepless nights
spent in hunting vermin, their friend had no sympathy. She only
jeered at them for not following her example and keeping the pests
away by smoking cigars and cigarettes.
Mme. Sand returned with her friends to Paris. There she
established herself in a flat in the Rue Gay-Lussac, from the windows
of which she could see her beloved Luxembourg. Her chambermaid,
who had not the remotest idea of her mistress’s distinction, always
addressed her as “Madame de Cendre,” and George forbade any one
to enlighten her.
Mme. Sand had come to Paris to assist at the rehearsals at the
Porte-Saint-Martin of her play Cadio. This indefatigable old lady of
threescore years and more, went every evening to the theatre,
where she stayed from six till two. In her company Juliette for the
first time penetrated “behind.” She was also present on the first
night. But the play was a failure. According to the author, this was
chiefly because the principal actor, one Roger, persisted in wearing a
hat with a white feather instead of a battered and weather-stained
cap. As the curtain was about to rise Mme. Sand tore out the feather
and broke it. But swift as lightning Mme. Roger, an ex-milliner,
sewed it together again. The actor entered beplumed. “La pièce est
perdu!” cried the authoress.
The next year the Adams were staying at Pierrefonds. There
George Sand joined them, and they spent together a delightful
fortnight there. In all that concerned her young friend, in Juliette’s
spiritual, professional, domestic and physical welfare, Mme. Sand
took the deepest interest. She marvelled at the numerous activities
Juliette continued to crowd into her life.
“J’admire q’étant ‘mondaine’ et toujours par monts et par vaux,”
she writes, “et très occupée de la famille et du ménage, vous ayez le
temps d’écrire et de penser. Au reste, cette activité est bonne à
l’esprit, mais n’usez pas trop le corps.”[161]
Sometimes George Sand feared for her friend the consequences of
her excitable temperament and her untiring energy. She would have
liked to have seen in her something of the serenity which the great
George had herself acquired. But she realised that with Juliette, as
with herself, this calm, this aloofness from life’s petty worries, would
come with old age. “We must not ask youth to anticipate age,” she
wrote. “And youth’s charm is in its impressionability.”[162]
Nevertheless, she adjures her friend to cultivate moderation in all
things, not to strive after violent sensations. “You are passionate and
exalted,” she wrote to Juliette; “that is good and beautiful, and we
love you for it.” “But,” she adds, “do not, in your craving for emotion,
afflict yourself unnecessarily. Spend yourself, but do not waste
yourself.... Your sleeplessness is not natural to youth.” It indicated,
thought Mme. Sand, that something was wrong in Juliette’s ordering
of her life. She advised her not to work at night, but to go to bed at
eleven, to rise at six and to write then, before the time came for her
daughter’s morning lessons. The writer of this letter did not herself
follow these precepts. But she had long passed out of Juliette’s
condition of nervous excitability. “Work,” she added, “is an act of
lucidity. Now, perfect lucidity is impossible without preliminary rest.”
Alas! the course of international affairs was rapidly rendering
impossible that calm restfulness to which George Sand was so wisely
exhorting Juliette.
In the summer of 1870 the Adams repeated their visit to Nohant.
On the 15th of July diplomatic relations between France and Prussia
were severed. On the 25th, M. Émile Ollivier read before the Corps
Legislatif the French Government’s declaration of war.
The house-party at Nohant immediately broke up, and the Adams
returned to Paris.

FOOTNOTES:
[138] W. H. Myers, Modern Essays (1883).
[139] George Sand, Correspondance, V. 164.
[140] Souvenirs, III. 282-3.
[141] Ibid., II. 83.
[142] That Liszt was the cause of their quarrel was well known.
Mme. Sand had written of it in her novel Horace, Mme. d’Agoult in
Nélida.
[143] For the bitterness of Mme. d’Agoult’s resentment, see
Souvenirs, II. 201-4.
[144] pp. 145-7.
[145] Correspondance, V. 220.
[146] The great George, apparently like Juliette herself, was a
believer in palmistry. See Souvenirs, II. 97.
[147] Souvenirs, III. 161, 239.
[148] Ibid.
[149] See George Sand’s letter to Flaubert, Correspondance, V.
220.
[150] It was at this restaurant that Sainte-Beuve gave that Good
Friday dinner which clerical circles regarded as a shocking
blasphemy.
[151] Souvenirs, III. 165-8.
[152] See ante, 55.
[153] Dumas was thinking of George Sand’s famous marionette
theatre at Nohant. See post, 129.
[154] Souvenirs, III. 172.
[155] Souvenirs, III. 170.
[156] George Sand, Correspondance, V. 243.
[157] Ibid., 245.
[158] Souvenirs, III. 205.
[159] Ibid., 259, and George Sand’s Correspondance, V. 258-9.
[160] Souvenirs, III. 268.
[161] George Sand, Correspondance, V. 317.
[162] Ibid., 250.
 CHAPTER X
THE WAR AND PREPARATION FOR THE SIEGE OF PARIS
1870
“Nous serons vaincus. Il n’y a qu’à voir le désordre, l’impossibilité
des armements.”—George Sand to Mme. Adam, August 18, 1870.
For years a few clear-sighted Frenchmen had seen the German
Peril approaching. Now it was at the gates of France. George Sand
and Edmond Adam had been more afraid of the “Anglo-Saxon
Contagion.” They had been inclined to scoff at Nefftzer’s jeremiads;
[163] but now, alas! they proved to be only too well founded.

The Adams in the anguish of their souls recalled their memorable

drive,[164] in the spring of 1869, along the Corniche Road, in the
company of Nino Bixio, the Garibaldian hero, who was then
Commander-in-Chief of the Italian army. Bixio had just returned
from Germany, whither he had gone at Victor Emmanuel’s command
in order to ascertain the precise condition of the Prussian army. Bixio
had come back firmly convinced that Bismarck was preparing war
against France.
“And you are not ready,” he had said to the Adams; “you will be
thoroughly beaten.”[165]
Then Adam, ghastly pale and half rising from his seat, had cried:
“Silence, Nino, or I will throw you into the sea. France, beaten by
the Prussians! Never, do you hear? Never.”
“And do you think it would give me pleasure?” the Italian had
retorted. “But understand, if you don’t wish to be beaten ... then
make an end of your opposition’s foolish, wicked, criminal campaign
against militarism. It is militarism which, entering into the very
marrow of Prussian bones, has for half a century been preparing her
to take her revenge for Jena. Ah! my poor Adam! How blind is
France.... Your Napoléon III is a provoker of invasion, and you
republicans, you will be ready to eat your hearts out for having been
party men before Frenchmen. When you refuse him soldiers, you are
idiotic.”
Then Bixio had spoken of the negotiations for a triple alliance
between France, Italy and Austria against Germany. According to the
Italian General, it was Napoléon’s support of the papacy, in which he
was encouraged by his ultramontane Empress, that had rendered
these negotiations fruitless.
In order to pass on to their political friends Bixio’s warnings, the
Adams had hastened their return to Paris. But they might have
spared themselves the trouble. For, with the exceptions of Thiers
and Nefftzer, no one had paid any heed whatever to the Italian
General’s prognostications. French politicians were then absorbed in
domestic affairs. But in a few weeks international matters forced
themselves upon their attention. For a new cloud appeared on the
horizon. This was General Prim’s offer of the Spanish crown to a
prince of the House of Hohenzollern. With feverish eagerness Juliette
and her friends had followed these negotiations. Instead of the usual
weekly dinner-party, followed by a reception, in Mme. Adam’s salon
there had been an assembly every evening. Juliette and her husband
were full of alarm. Their German friend, Louis Bamberger, said: “This
time, my children, you will have to give in.”[166] One evening Adam,
who had been to see Thiers in the afternoon, related how the petit
grand homme had entreated him to supplicate his friends not to play
with fire. “It is pure folly,” he exclaimed, “we are on a volcano.”
Then had come the news that Prince Anthony of Hohenzollern had
on his son’s behalf renounced the candidature. “The incident is
closed,” said the chief minister, Émile Ollivier. “We were on the eve of
war,” said Thiers, “but now everything is arranged.”
 With immense relief, believing peace to be assured, the Adams,
who had postponed their visit to George Sand on account of the
national crisis, now left Paris for Nohant.
But, alas! their equanimity had soon been disturbed. The French
Government, not content with Prince Anthony’s undertaking, had
required from the King of Prussia a promise that henceforth no
Hohenzollern should ascend the Spanish throne. King William’s
refusal of this demand, and the events of the following fortnight,
had culminated in the French Government’s declaration of war on
July 20th.
On the afternoon of that day George Sand and her guests were
sitting in the park at Nohant. Conversation languished, for the
menace of war was in the air. Suddenly the sound of a drum was
heard. Every member of the company trembled.... Maurice came
towards them, girded with a drum, and crying, Vive la France!
George Sand and Juliette Adam burst into tears, while all echoed
that cry Vive la France, which henceforth was to be the motive
power of all Mme. Adam’s being.[167]
On their return to Paris the Adams found awaiting them numerous
letters from their friends, containing various opinions as to the
declaration of war. France in those days was not without her
conscientious objectors. The pacifist Arlès Dufour would have
preferred civil to international war. “The former would have cost less
in men and in money,” he wrote. M. Adam’s German friend, Louis
Bamberger, took his leave of him, saying, “Love your country, Adam,
as I love mine. I send you a last remembrance before the shock of
arms.” Bamberger, desiring with all his heart German unity, was the
fervent admirer of Bismarck, whom he regarded as alone able to
achieve it.
Hetzel reported in Juliette’s salon how he had just seen Mérimée.
In the previous winter, at Bruyères, Juliette had found her friend
obsessed by the impending calamity.[168] “You republicans,” he had
said, “you have disarmed France; and we imperialists, asleep in our
false security, have abandoned her.” “Now,” said Hetzel, “Mérimée is
deploring his country’s unpreparedness.” “We have soldiers, but we
have no generals,” he lamented.... “Je supplie le grand Mécanicien,
si nous devons être vaincus, de faire cesser mes tours de roue.”[169]
Mérimée’s prayer was granted: dying on the 24th of September,
1870, he did not live to see the consummation of his country’s
defeat.[170]
Paul de Saint-Victor, Juliette’s Catholic friend, was furious against
Renan, whom he accused of being pro-German. It was true that
Renan had admired much that was German, and that he had often
despaired of the future of France. He believed that the Germans
would be the teachers of the world.[171]
“Several of the University professors,” remarks Mme. Adam, “have
not yet been able to bring themselves to love France as much as
they have admired Germany.”[172]
Nevertheless, despite these differences of opinion, a great wave of
patriotism swept through the country. “Il n’y a plus de petits crevés,”
writes Juliette, “ils ont disparu comme par miracle et sont devenus
les soldats de notre France.”[173]

“People are beginning once more to use the word patrie.[174] It

had been forgotten, buried beneath humanitarianism. Now it
returns. It is uttered with reverence and devotion. Adam and I,
when we pronounce it, feel that to us both it is equally sacred.”
Mérimée had deplored the lack of generals in France. Bixio had
said, “You have neither a Moltke, nor a Bismarck, nor a William.”
When Bazaine was appointed to command the Lorraine army, Mme.
Adam went to see her old friend Toussenel, who had known Bazaine
at the time of the Mexican expedition. “He is no soldier,” said
Toussenel; “I am more of one than he. He may be a politician. He is
probably not lacking in diplomacy, neither will he be above
intrigue.”[175]
 The hesitations and inactivity of the French army during the first
days of the war filled with misgiving the Adams and their friends.
“We had thought,” writes Juliette,[176] “that we could arrest the
Prussian advance by throwing ourselves before the enemy with all
our furia francese and our united forces. But already our troops are
scattered. There are marches and countermarches, but no advance.
As during the Italian war, so now, there is no unity of command.” In
those days Parisians, like ourselves during the present war, were
troubled by the lack of news. Silence, suspense, were harder to bear
than anything. “A frightful silence fills the boulevard,” writes Edmond
de Goncourt. “There is not a carriage to be heard, not a child’s cry of
joy, and on the horizon is a Paris where sound itself seems dead.”
When it did arrive the news was as bad as could be. All through
August came tidings of defeat after defeat: Wissembourg on the 4th;
Forbach and Woerth on one day, the 6th; then, on the 9th, the fall of
Ollivier and the Ministry; finally, on the 1st of September, the rout of
Sedan.
On the evening of the 3rd, when about six o’clock the terrible
tidings began to spread like wild-fire through Paris, people came out
into the streets, crowds thronged the boulevards, growing every
hour. By ten o’clock, Paris between the Rue Montmartre and the
Grand Opéra presented the appearance of one immense forum.
Juliette went down and mingled with the people, listening to their
conversation.
Everywhere the humiliation and disgrace of France were described
as unbearable. All manner of charges were brought against the
Emperor. Napoléon was said to have surrendered, not himself alone,
but the munitions of the army. His own personal baggage, however,
that long train of wagons encumbering the march of his soldiers,
which had won for him the nickname of Empereur Colis (Luggage
Emperor), he had saved from the hands of the enemy.[177]
“The Prussians will be at Laon to-morrow, and in three days
before Paris,” murmured one. “Wherever you look it is ruin. Our last
army has capitulated. We are a nation no longer. We are nothing but
a troop of prisoners.”
“Down with the Empire!” shouted hundreds of voices. All the
hatred of the crowd at first focussed on Buonaparte, then it turned
against the Corps Legislatif, the Parliament, which had voted this
accursed war, and by its baseness had consummated the national
disaster. The Chamber had been hastily convoked, and at midnight it
was still sitting. “We must march against it and turn it out,” howled
the crowd. But on the point of falling in for this purpose there was a
hesitation. “What should be the rallying cry?” Parisians more than
any other people in the world have ever been dominated by fine and
appropriate words. And it was perfectly characteristic of the Paris
mob that it found itself incapable of proceeding until it should have
discovered le mot juste, the rallying cry, which should lead it like a
banner.
“Down with the Corps Legislatif?” was suggested.
“No! No!”
“Long live the Republic?”
“No, it is too soon for that.”
“Vive la France?”
“No, that is too well known.”
“Death to the Prussians?”
“Better wait for that.”
But suddenly the crowd found the word, a word which indicated
the tenor of the Revolution which was to follow: a word which like a
ray of light was to conciliate a hundred opinions, to gather into one
collective act a hundred individual energies, a simple, powerful,
irresistible, sonorous word, the voice of the people pronouncing the
people’s sentence upon that imperial régime, which, for close on a
score of years, had been preparing the ruin of France; the word was
déchéance (dethronement). To the refrain of that word scanned thus
—Dé—ché—ance, and sung to the refrain of Les Lampions, the
crowd thronged westward on to the Place de la Bastille, to awake
that revolutionary quarter, the Faubourg Saint Antoine, asleep for
twenty years. Then back again it surged on to the boulevards, there
to deliberate and to postpone the attack on the Corps Legislatif until
the morrow, Sunday.
In the small hours of that Sabbath morning Juliette from her
window watched the boulevards emptying, the people going home,
but not to sleep. Lights in the windows announced a vigil—la veillée
des larmes.
“Il semble”, writes Mme. Adam, “que sous chaque toit un malade
est à toute extrêmité et qu’on passe la nuit à son chevet. Ce malade
c’est La France à l’agonie.”[178]
The 4th of September dawned resplendent, an ideal autumn day.
“The sun shines to-day,” writes Juliette in her diary.[179] “It is the
people’s sun. There is no fear of rain damping our patriotism.”[180]
In this diary, which she kept for her daughter, who was away in
Normandy, staying near Granville with her grandparents, Mme.
Adam, as they passed, described the events of those memorable
hours. By ten o’clock all Paris was in the streets, thronging towards
the Place de la Concorde and the bridge leading to the Chambre des
Députés, where the members of the Corps Legislatif were to meet at
twelve o’clock. Meanwhile, as the surging crowd outside grew larger
and larger and more and more clamant, in the smoking-room of the
House of Representatives perplexed deputies were vainly seeking
some new form of government to replace the Empire. They were
hurriedly turning over pages describing those numerous
constitutional experiments which France had been trying since the
Great Revolution; between the Palais Legislatif and the Palais des
Tuileries, where the Empress was on the point of flight, all the time
despairing ministers were hurrying to and fro. To Thiers’ house on
the Place St. Georges the dying Mérimée was dragging himself to
entreat, on behalf of a woman and her son, the intervention of le
petit grand homme on whose wisdom every one counted.
Mme. Adam, from her place of vantage in a corner of the bridge
close to the balustrade and the great lamps, listened to the talk
which surged around her. Some wanted a republic, others feared
that a republic would mean a revolution. With the fire of
republicanism burning in her own heart like a religion, Juliette felt
moved to intervene in what she describes as her first public speech.
“The Republic,” she exclaimed, “is not decreed, it is made, it is
born of yourselves. It represents the highest degree of courage, of
intelligence, of activity, of expansion to which a nation can attain. If
society be a magnified edition of individuals, then the Republic is the
result of our noblest actions, a living assemblage of our broadest
and most progressive duties, rights and interests. Henceforth no
social malady, no monarchical canker shall kill it. Then long live the
Republic.”[181]
“My pathos,” writes Mme. Adam, “was not without its success. But
my chief delight was to hear repeated around me by thousands of
voices: Vive la République.”
From twelve till three, while ministers were deliberating and
Eugénie de Montijo was escaping from her Palace, the mob
continued to surge round the Chambre des Députés.
At half-past three the deputies heard the crashing noise of doors
being broken open: the crowd had invaded the Chamber. But, like
Charles I, the Parisians found that the birds had flown; no ministers
were present, there were only a few deputies of the left. Among
them was Gambetta. He vainly tried to address the mob. But even
that resonant voice could not obtain a hearing. Amidst cries of
“Where are the ministers?” he was howled down. And it was not
until the ministers had reappeared, and the President of the
Chamber, M. Schneider, from his official seat, had reminded the
people of the danger threatening them, with the enemy barely one
hundred miles away, that there was something like order. The
ministers, fearing the violence of the mob, stayed but a brief space
in the Chamber. After their departure, Gambetta entered the tribune
and declared that Louis Napoléon Buonaparte and his dynasty had
for ever ceased to reign in France.
Forthwith, at the invitation of another deputy of the left, Jules
Favre, the crowd followed Favre himself and Gambetta to the Hôtel
de Ville. There at half-past four the Republic was proclaimed and the
Government of National Defence declared. Its President was General
Trochu, Governor of Paris and Minister of War. Of the fourteen
members, all deputies either for Paris or the department of Seine,
nine were the Adams’ personal friends. Gambetta was Minister of the
Interior, Ernest Picard of Finance, Jules Simon of Education, Jules
Favre of Foreign Affairs, Dorian of Public Works. Garnier-Pagès,
Pelletan, Emmanuel Arago and Rochefort were all ministers without
portfolios.[182] When the Revolution broke out Rochefort was in
prison on a charge of high treason, based on his attacks on the
Empire in his paper La Lanterne. On the afternoon of the 4th, he
was liberated by the crowd and brought in triumph to the Hôtel de
Ville.

“The end of that day was splendid,” writes Juliette.[183] “A fresh

breeze blew from the old river of Paris on to the assembled
multitude. Once again the Hôtel de Ville had become le Louvre
superbe des révolutions. The last rays of the setting sun gilded that
people’s palace, played upon its windows, causing them to sparkle
with a brilliance far surpassing the glitter of all the diamonds in the
imperial crown.”
The Revolution had passed without the shedding of a drop of
blood, without a single deed of violent disorder. The forecast of a
working man, whom Juliette had overheard that afternoon, had
come true. “Ah, well!” he had exclaimed, looking round on the
crowd,[184] “we are all here—we, the robbers, les partageux, the
assassins! Here we are on this fine Sunday. And there will be no
robbery and no assassination.... Every one is pleased, even the
omnibus company; for not one of their ‘buses has been held up and
they have not lost a threepence.”
Indeed, there was universal rejoicing. Confidence and
determination shone on all faces. Old friends met in the street and
embraced one another. The fall of that oppressive régime established
on the 2nd of December brought intense relief. On the day after the
Revolution, George Sand wrote to Mme. Adam from Nohant a letter
of fervent rejoicing: “Quelle grande chose,” she exclaims, “quelle
belle journée au milieu de tant de désastres! Je n’espérais pas cette
victoire de la liberté sans résistance.”[185] Even with the enemy
advancing to their gates Parisians breathed again, realising that
henceforth it was for la patrie and not for a dynasty that they would
fight.
Search as we will among the numerous records of those
memorable hours, penned by those who lived through them, we
shall find none describing more vividly than these forty pages of
Mme. Adam’s Souvenirs, the talk, the incidents and the movements
of that vast crowd, thronging the Paris streets, all swayed by the
excitement of a revolution. For la grande Française, as Mme. Adam
was later to be called, never lives more intensely than when in a
crowd. “Je vis d’une autre existence dès que je me mèle à la foule,”
she writes.[186]
The gladness of that September evening, however, was but a rift
in the clouds now rapidly enveloping Paris. The Prussians were
expected to reach the capital on Thursday, the 8th of September.
They did not arrive until the 19th. In the interval, Mme. Adam took a
hasty night journey to Granville, in order that Alice might have a
glimpse of her mother before she was shut up in the besieged city.
After waiting five hours in a queue at the Gare Montparnasse, she
obtained tickets for herself and her maid, and caught one of the few
trains running. Adam feared that she might not be able to return.
But after spending a few hours with her family, whom she was not
to see again for many months, she tore herself away and entered
the Paris train, which was said to be the last. Indeed, whether it
would continue as far as Paris seemed doubtful. Juliette and her
maid, who, with three fellow-travellers and a dog, were the only
passengers bound for that destination, were, however, promised by
the driver that, if compelled to abandon his train, he would take
them on his engine into Paris. This was unnecessary, for, to the
immense joy of Adam, who had almost ceased to hope for his wife’s
return, the whole train steamed into the Gare Montparnasse.
This was on the 11th of September. During the following days
Juliette was busy stocking her larder ready for the siege.
“Je vais, je trotte, pour compléter mes provisions,” she writes. “Il
faut tant de choses! Tout peut manquer a un moment donné,
jusqu’au sel, jusqu’au poivre, jusqu’à la moutarde. Je déploie dans
mes recherches tout mon génie domestique. Je ne rève que mouton
d’Australie, Liebig, jambon, légumes Chollet, épicerie, comestibles.
Mes poches, ma robe, mes bas, mes mains, sont toujours
encombrés quand je rentre. Si je découvre une conserve nouvelle, je
rève à l’étonnement qu’elle causera dans trois mois, aux amis que
j’inviterai à la manger! Verrai-je des héros surgir dans mon
entourage: au lieu de leur tresser des, d’orner leur maison de
guirlandes, je leur offrirai une bouteille de jeunes carottes confites,
un sac de choux frisés: il faut qu mon héros ait accompli les plus
grands exploits pour que je lui présente un fromage tête de mort de
Hollande.”[187]
All Juliette’s friends were similarly employed. “Le fanatisme de la
provision nous possède tous!” she exclaims, on meeting a Member
of Parliament loaded with boxes of sardines.
Having furnished her larder, Mme. Adam next volunteered to nurse
the wounded, who were pouring into Paris. Her father’s lessons in
anatomy, her grandfather’s lessons in the dressing of wounds, now
stood her in good stead. She was appointed to install in the
Conservatoire de Musique a private hospital with fifty beds.
Henceforth the provisioning and equipping of this hospital and the
others which she organised later became her chief concern. “I hold
out my hand to every one; I beg, I write, I do everything to get
money,” she says. It was a grand day when the hospital workers,
well provided with bags, bottles and baskets, were permitted to
penetrate into the Tuileries, now given back to the nation, and to
replenish their stores from the imperial larder. Lists had been made
out of the viands to which each hospital was entitled: macaroni for
the Conservatoire de Musique, sausages for the Picpus Hospital,
kidney beans for the Théâtre français, oil for the Grand Orient, jam
for all.
In connection with the Conservatoire Hospital, Mme. Adam
organised a workroom where the wives, mothers and daughters of
the men who were fighting, instead of staying at home and eating
their hearts out with anxiety, could meet together, and, while sewing
for the wounded, encourage one another and sympathise with one
another’s sufferings.
Edmond Adam was a member of the Government Committee
appointed to investigate the condition of the general hospitals. This
he found so lamentable, that in many instances, owing to the
infection of wards and operating theatres, amputation cases had no
chance of recovery.
Despite the difficulties and dangers which beset her on every
hand, Mme. Adam’s heart burned with a courage and a hope, which
her friend, George Sand, appreciated to the full, when she wrote to
her from Nohant on the 15th of September.[188] “Vous êtes
généreusement exaltée par un peril prochain et défini.” This was one
of the last letters Mme. Adam received before the gates of Paris
were closed.

FOOTNOTES:
[163] See ante, 99.
[164] Ibid., 118.
[165] Souvenirs, III. 349 et seq.
[166] Souvenirs, III. 448.
[167] Souvenirs, III. 464.
[168] Ibid., 409.
[169] Ibid., 470.
[170] For Mme. Adam’s description of the grim incident which
occurred at his funeral, see Souvenirs, V. 66.
[171] Grant Duff in Notes from a Diary, September 1864.
[172] Souvenirs, III. 471.
[173] Ibid., 468.
[174] Ibid., 471.
[175] Ibid., 470.
[176] Ibid., 473.
[177] Souvenirs, IV. 2.
[178] Souvenirs, IV. 7.
[179] This diary, first published in Le Rappel, was afterwards
embodied in the series of Mme. Adam’s Souvenirs, of which it
constitutes the fourth volume, entitled Mes Illusions et nos
Souffrances pendant le siège de Paris.
[180] To Edmond de Goncourt (Journal under September 4, 1870)
the 4th of September seemed a “grey day.” Jules Favre,
Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale, I. 64, writes, “la journée ...
se leva tiède et radieuse.”
[181] Souvenirs, IV. 23.
[182] For the complete list of members of the Government, see
Jules Favre, Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale, I. 89.
[183] Souvenirs, IV. 40.
[184] Souvenirs, IV. 30.
[185] George Sand, Correspondance, VI. 29.
[186] Souvenirs, IV. 244.
[187] Souvenirs, IV. 62.
[188] Correspondance de George Sand, VI. 34.
 CHAPTER XI
THE SIEGE OF PARIS
September 19, 1870-January 28, 1871
“Ce caractère parisien, qu’on peut aujourd’hui résumer en un seul mot:
héroïsme?.”—Mme. Adam, Souvenirs, December 7, 1870.

“At present,” said Mme. Adam to a friend on the 27th of

September, 1870, “we have barely endured ten days of siege. And I
will wager that in three months I shall not be any more disgusted
with it than I am at present.”[189]
Juliette won her bet, for during the first three months of the siege
she bore her sufferings cheerfully and without flinching. And even
during the fourth month, though her health broke down, her
courage did not fail.
During those interminable four months the two million souls
cooped up in Paris knew every misery which has ever fallen to the
lot of the besieged: internal discontent and disorder, resulting in the
abortive revolution of the 31st of October; extreme scarcity of food
and munitions of war for nearly three weeks, the 20th of December
until the 8th of January; complete isolation from the rest of France
and from the whole outer world.[190] To these sufferings, which
Juliette shared with her fellow-citizens, was added her personal
anxiety for her daughter’s safety. She did not even know where her
daughter was. She hoped that Alice, with her grandparents, had
succeeded in crossing to Jersey; for the Prussians were said to have
invaded Normandy. But for many a long week, from the 19th of
September until the 20th of December, no news came. Juliette
endured this agony of suspense with fortitude. Then at length,
through Mme. de Pierreclos, came tidings that Alice was well and
with her grandparents at St. Helier. Straightway Juliette’s motherly
mind flies at once to other anxious parents in the besieged city who
are still without news of their children. For all through those days of
horror Mme. Adam’s heart never ceased to beat in unison with the
hearts of her fellow-sufferers, to bleed with their sorrows, to throb
with their anxieties and their fears. Living thus in constant
communion with her neighbours, she was able to depict graphically
in her journal the perpetual ebb and flow of public feeling and
opinion: now it was confident and hopeful, now foreboding and
doubtful, but never, not even in the ghastly days of the end,
completely conquered by despair. Throughout, with the exception of
the actual days of bombardment, the comic spirit, Juliette’s
inseparable friend, never forsook her; and, while feeling to the tragic
point the sufferings of others, she was able to joke about her own
sorrows and privations.
Next to her separation from Alice, the hardest to bear of her
personal trials during the siege was being compelled to leave her flat
in the Boulevard Poissonnière. On the 11th of October, Adam having
been appointed Prefect of Police, he and his wife had to take up
their abode in the Préfecture.
In the halls and corridors of that gloomy building, what hours of
weary waiting for a passport’s stamping have not many of us
endured during this war-time! We can well sympathise, therefore,
with Mme. Adam’s horror at the idea of spending not hours only, but
days, weeks and months within the Préfecture’s lugubrious portals.
We can understand her grief at being obliged to exchange her
cheerful flat, her “dovecot” on the Boulevard Poissonnière, for
l’affreuse prison in the Rue de Jérusalem.
To any one with her vivid imagination it was a perfect nightmare
merely to watch the going and coming of the prison-vans, lumbering
into the courtyard of La Sainte Chapelle, and to hear the cries of
“No. 1 for Mazas, No. 2 for Ste. Pélagie.”[191]